Prologue #2
The peephole slammed shut, and Persephone was alone once more.
Then the sound of locks clicking echoed through the alley, and the door opened, groaning on ancient hinges.
A shadowy stairwell waited beyond the door frame, with no sign of her host. She looked over her shoulder and then back through the door.
She didn’t want to go inside. She wanted to return to the coach, to go home, to never come to such a terrible place again.
But it was cold, and she was alone, and there was nothing else to be done.
Light shone inside the witch’s house; a few spare candles burned in the darkness of the stairwell.
Wooden walls followed the stairs downward before giving way to dirt, and roots grew through cracks in the walls, weaving in and out of the crumbling house.
At the bottom of the stairs, a shape waited, cloaked in a robe of ragged green.
The hedge witch was so warped that she seemed more tree than human.
Bark covered one side of her face, and where her left eye should have been, there was only a knot of wood, like the false eyes of elderwood trees.
Stringy hair fell nearly to the floor, and pine needles grew along her braids in sheaths.
Shelflike mushrooms climbed the bark of her neck, and moss speckled the rest of her, tinging her skin green.
Even her robes seemed rotten: crisscrossed with patches, crusted with lichen, and held together by rootlets and tendrils.
A burl of wood the size of a pumpkin grew from a hole in the shoulder of her cloak, and she bent beneath the weight of it like a hunchback.
The hedge witch reached her knobby hand to the wall, grasping a root that wove between the boards of the house. Behind Persephone, the door groaned and then crept closed. The locks clicked into place.
“Come,” the hedge witch said. She turned slowly, half-wooden limbs clicking as she hobbled into the next room.
Persephone lifted the hem of her cloak and followed.
She turned at the bottom of the stairs and came to a dark, low-ceilinged room.
Roots rose from the dirt floor and wove between the stone walls like mortar.
On the far wall sat a hearth with a low fire crackling beneath an iron kettle.
It cast flickering light over the room, with a single altar-like table at its center.
Herbs hung in bunches from the ceiling’s timber beams. Even with the fire, Persephone shivered.
The hedge witch stood before her, at least a head shorter than she.
“Remove your cloak,” the woman said. Persephone obliged, trying to stop her hands from shaking.
The hedge witch was even more monstrous up close.
Her one eye glowed in the firelight like an amber set in withered skin.
Persephone folded the velvet cloak and placed it on a nearby chair.
Beneath it, she wore her most modest gown, the ivory muslin, three seasons out of style.
“Your dress, too.”
Persephone paused. It would take her ages to get dressed again. “Is that quite necessary?”
The hedge witch’s single eye traced her up and down. “I must see you, to see if you are truly with child. If it’s modesty you’re worried about, I need only see your belly.”
Persephone paused, then reached behind her neck and unfastened the clasp.
She peeled herself out of the gown, carefully folding it on the table.
She began to unbutton the front of her corset—a simple cotton over-bust, one that didn’t press so painfully on her stomach.
Then she stood, exposed, wearing only her shift.
Her barely noticeable belly spilled out, and she felt as though she could breathe again.
The hedge witch shuffled forward and extended her hands, reaching under Persephone’s shift. The old woman’s fingers looked like bulbs of ginger. Something—some delicate current—flowed from them and into Persephone’s stomach.
“Has the sickness started yet? In the mornings,” the hedge witch asked.
Persephone hesitated, but then nodded.
“And your blood?”
“Not for two months.”
The hedge witch made a gruff sound and then took her hands from Persephone’s stomach. She could feel the little rootlets on the old woman’s fingers peel away from her skin.
“Aye. You are with child,” the hedge witch said. “You can cover up, now.”
Persephone lowered her shift slowly. She felt a pang of panic, hearing the woman say those words. Perhaps, in the back of her mind, she had still hoped she was mistaken. She picked up her gown and held it against her chest.
“Can you get rid of it?” Persephone asked.
The hedge witch nodded. “For a price.”
Persephone opened her reticule and produced a few small coins. The hedge witch took the coins and began counting them. It wasn’t that much, all in all. Funny, how little it cost to kill something.
No, Persephone thought—not kill. Just like plucking a daisy. That was what his letter had said. And she supposed it was true. To remove a seed from its soil does not kill a flower; nothing dies that cannot live on its own.
The hedge witch nodded, and the coin purse vanished into the folds of her robes.
“Sit,” she said, gesturing at the table.
Brownish-red stains and long scars marred the wood, the thousand marks of a blade.
Persephone sat, holding her gown in her lap like a child holding a blanket.
On the far wall, above the fireplace, hung a series of rusted tools.
A blade, a pair of forceps, a sharpened hook, and a long, thin set of shears shaped like a bird’s beak. All of them caked in red dust.
Persephone’s stomach clenched. Her fingers gripped the fabric of her gown. “Will you… will you have to cut it out?”
The hedge witch looked to her and then to the blades. “Oftentimes, yes. But you are not so far along. There are other ways.”
The hedge witch shuffled to the far wall where a tall shelf waited, crammed with glass jars.
The witch picked one, opened it, and shook seven black seeds into her palms. She placed them in the wooden mortar on the table and then shuffled back to the shelf, muttering to herself and grabbing another jar.
When she was finished, the hedge witch lifted her knobby hand above the mortar and closed her single eye.
A violet flower crept from her fingertip, then wilted in an instant, turning black and falling into the mortar.
The witch grunted as she ground the herbs into a paste, her ancient hands working surely around the pestle.
Finally, she fetched the kettle from above the fire and filled the bowl with steaming water.
“Drink it,” she said, offering the bowl to Persephone.
“What is it?”
“Pennyroyal flower, to remove the seed. Oil of valerian root, to put you to sleep while it happens. Yarrow leaf and seed of the thistle, to keep the pennyroyal from harming you. Willow bark for the pain. That’s all.”
Persephone looked at the mixture, a purple-black sludge that smelled like rotten pomegranates. She cradled the wooden bowl in her hands. “Will it hurt?” Persephone asked. Her voice shook.
The hedge witch gave her a sympathetic look. “Of course it will, child. But not right now. Not at first—I promise,” she said, “but later. When the seed is gone and needs to get out. That will hurt.”
Persephone looked at the woman and then back at the bowl.
“The whole thing, child,” the hedge witch said.
She lifted the bowl to her lips and drank.
It tasted foul, like liquor and dirt. Chunks of the herb tickled her throat, and more of it spilled down her chin, dripping onto her gown.
By the time she was halfway through the sludge, she felt woozy.
By the time she’d taken the last drop, the room was spinning, and her mind was full of vapor.
“My gown,” she said, dropping the bowl. Trails of black liquid stained the bodice, marring the white fabric.
“It’s all right, little one,” the hedge witch said. She caught Persephone as she collapsed, lowering her gently onto the slab. “Sleep now. It will be over soon.”
When Persephone woke, the fire had gone out.
Sweat covered her brow, clinging to her cheeks like dew.
The corsage she’d so carefully grown was wilted, dead, the petals plastered to her skin.
Above her, herbs still hung from the ceiling, branches reaching from the canopy of some terrible forest. A dream came back to her in pieces.
A white bee drinking blood from a white flower.
A little boy with asphodels for eyes, holding a pale, molding fruit.
She rolled onto her side and tried to force her way upright, but her head swam and she lay back down.
Pain sliced through her stomach, and she curled into herself, gasping.
Finally, she managed to push herself up.
Her stomach screamed, but she lifted herself off the table, wavering on unsteady feet.
Something moved in the corner of the room: a mass of shadow, covered in rags and moss.
Then she saw the hedge witch’s lone yellow eye staring back at her.
“You must rest,” the hedge witch said. “Lie back down.”
When Persephone spoke, her words were dreamy and far away. “Is it done?” she slurred. “Is—is it gone?”
The hedge witch looked at her, her amber eye glinting in the dark. “Aye. It’s dead, but not gone. You will need to pass it soon. Until then you must rest.”
Persephone felt another lurch in her stomach. Tears welled in her eyes. “Good,” she said, forcing a smile, “good. Well, then. I must be on my way.”
She moved around the table, grabbing her ruined gown and holding it to her chest. Then she limped toward the stairs, forcing herself to walk through the lancing pain in her stomach. The hedge witch blocked her path.
“You must stay,” she said. “You are not well.”
Persephone stumbled past her. “No, I—I cannot stay,” she said, still slurring. “People will talk. I have places I need to be. People—people who are expecting me.”